


Miscellaneous Primeval Drabbles

by Annariel



Category: Primeval, The Listeners - Walter de la Mere
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annariel/pseuds/Annariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miscellaneous drabbles I've written for various Primeval prompts and challenges.  Characters, pairings and ratings vary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nanites for Helen

"The point is that the nanites calculate your optimal visual appearance and then adjust your physiognomy to suit."

Helen studied herself thoughtfully in the gilded mirror.

"Take that short hair, for instance, much more practical for your lifestyle, I should have thought. Yet appropriately stylish for all social occasions. Your previous look, if you don't mind my saying so, lacked a certain refinement."

Helen's smile could have been a simper. Nick Cutter, however, would have backed off cautiously had he seen it.

"And these?" Helen asked, casually thrusting the offending items forward.

"The nanites obviously anticipate they will prove useful."


	2. White Landscape

Connor stood in the snow and rubbed his hands together.

"What are we doing out here again?" he asked.

"Having fun." Abby trudged up the slope behind him, dragging the plastic sledge.

"But its dark now."

"Look at the stars though."

Connor looked up into the sky. It was devastatingly clear and out here in countryside there was little background light to obscure the view.

Abby came up beside him and took his arm.

"Happy Christmas, Connor," she whispered. Then she stood on tiptoe and her lips brushed against his.

Up above them a shooting star shot across the heavens.


	3. Power Corrupts

"Leek! What a surprise. I was rather under the impression you were dead."

"History changes." Leek shrugged.

"What do you want?"

"I bring you this."

Leek opened his hands to display a small crystal. Shards of light flickered in and out of it.

"What is it?" Lester was fascinated in spite of himself.

"It controls the anomalies. It let's you see how a tweak here or a prod there can change anything or everything. I searched all through time so I could bring it to you."

"Give it to me." Lester's voice was thick with lust.

"Say please, Sir James."


	4. And in the Darkness Bind Them

**Darkness.**

"So are you going to help me now?"

"No."

 **Darkness.**

"Come on, Connor. I'm hardly Mephistopheles. Where's your sense of scientific curiousity?"

"Where's Cutter?"

 **Darkness.** Trying to win me over with classical allusions. Melkor would have been a better metaphor - destroying the music through pride. Mundanes!

"Look Connor. I don't know how to control the changes and they're getting worse. I need your help."

"Go to hell, Helen!" (or Angband).

 **Darkness.**

"Connor. London's gone."

 **Light.** Orodruin erupts in the distance, somewhere in the region of Hyde Park if my geography serves.

"Well, Helen. Let's get started shall we."


	5. And in the Darkness Bind Them

**Darkness.**

"So are you going to help me now?"

"No."

 **Darkness.**

"Come on, Connor. I'm hardly Mephistopheles. Where's your sense of scientific curiousity?"

"Where's Cutter?"

 **Darkness.** Trying to win me over with classical allusions. Melkor would have been a better metaphor - destroying the music through pride. Mundanes!

"Look Connor. I don't know how to control the changes and they're getting worse. I need your help."

"Go to hell, Helen!" (or Angband).

 **Darkness.**

"Connor. London's gone."

 **Light.** Orodruin erupts in the distance, somewhere in the region of Hyde Park if my geography serves.

"Well, Helen. Let's get started shall we."


	6. As Time Goes By

Suddenly Nick stepped forward and kissed her. "Don't Go."

Jenny sighed. "Inside of us, we both know you belong with Claudia. If you stop me putting things right, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

"The physicists might be wrong. You don't have to do this."

"We both have a job to do. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of."

Nick's fingers brushed across her lips. "Here's looking at you kid."

Then Jenny turned and walked into the anomaly.


	7. A Walk in the Woods

"Stay very still."

"What!"

"and quiet."

The smallest, blondest slip of a girl stepped out of the undergrowth holding a dart gun. She reached out one hand.

"It tracks movement and loud noises," she said quietly.

The soft touch reassured me. Slowly, she raised the pistol. The creature roared as the dart hit. I tensed to run but the pressure on my arm increased. Her composure held me.

"What now?" I hissed.

"We wait," she whispered.

Five minutes later the thing was asleep on the path. My saviour graced me with the brightest, most beautiful smile.

"Well done," she said.


	8. Bored

"I'm bored."

Lyle was naked and nothing if not decorative. The whitening scar, where a raptor had slashed him open, traced its way across his skin. Lester had the temptation to run a finger down it, if only to remind himself that Lyle survived. Lyle would be there to hold him when he cried out in the depths of the night.

His eyes flickered to the television. He had really wanted to watch that documentary. However, there was always the record button and, as another lover had once said to him. When you're bored of sex, you're bored of life.


	9. Don't Wanna Know About Evil

Sometimes, in the first confusion of waking, Abby had the faintest recollection of an arm draped across her waist. She had the memory of the sensation of breasts pressed against her back. She sometimes thought she could see a drift of auburn hair across her shoulders and onto the pillow which glimmered golden brown in the morning sunlight.

So it was that, when sick to the heart of Leek's treachery and the death and the destruction, it seemed completely natural to her to seek solace in Jenny's arms. She wept uncontrollably while a soft voice murmured

"Hush, my love, hush."


	10. I'm Waiting for the Cities to Crumble

Abby trudged up the hillside, Claudia at her heels.

"Are you sure we're headed in the right direction?" asked Claudia.

Abby looked at the compass in her hands. "Helen said due east."

"I wish I trusted Helen more."

"So do I."

They crested the brow of the hill. Abby felt Claudia's hand clasp her own. Vegetation grew over the ruined city below them, adding a green haze to the buildings. Abby could see the outline of a dome and spires.

"I studied at Oxford," whispered Claudia.

 _I'm waiting for the cities to crumble_ sang a half-remembered lyric in Abby's head.


	11. Finding Julius Caesar Drunk off his Arse in a Pub

"Someone's having a good time," Lacey commented.

There was a lone pub on the derelict estate. A loud male voice could be heard singing.

"Bibit ille, bibit illa,  
Bibit serves cum ancilla,"

"That's Latin," said Tremayne, surprised.

"How I miss the benefits of a classical education."

The two women exchanged glances and then hurriedly entered the pub.

* * *

"You didn't think to contact someone?" demanded Tremayne gesturing at the large be-toga-ed man seated at the bar, laurel-wreath slightly askew.

The landlord shrugged. "These are solid gold," he brandished an aureus, "and he seems harmless enough. Catch me turning down good custom."


	12. Just Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warning:** How many characters can you kill off in 100 words challenge.

"According to all records 4th January 2009 was the human race's last day," the aggressors helpfully announced over hijacked airwaves.

Jenny, Lorraine, Abby and Lacey were on their monthly, girls-only lunch break. Lester refused to wait before sealing the ARC. That was when Cutter took a pistol and shot him. Lyle gunned Nick down and ordered the shutters closed.

Ditzy and Finn died protecting Connor while he sought to jam the enemy weapons. Blade was AWOL somewhere, armed only with knives. Lyle didn't expect to see him again.

"Just us," he said to Kermit as they waited in the dark.


	13. The  Listeners

"Did you find them?" Stephen asked.

Ryan's cloak was made of a black velvet that seemed to absorb the light. It turned him into nothing more than a shadow, lurking in the centre of the forest path.

"Maybe," Ryan's head turned to stare back the way he had come.

"You came as soon as you could." Stephen could hear a certain shrillness in his insistence.

"It wasn't enough."

A flock of ravens suddenly rose up from the forest depths, the air echoing with their harsh cries.

"It's all you have to give," Stephen offered and wished he could offer more.


	14. Picture Prompt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/n593/CharleyTee1/Largekissslower.gif from charley_tee

Matt had read everyone's files before he even arrived at the ARC. His father would not allow that anyone could be trusted. But some, he agreed, should be treated with more caution than others.

Caroline Steel was dangerous. Matt never let his guard down for a moment. That made it easier somehow, the hungry kisses and the frantic love-making. He couldn't possibly be betraying his sacred trust because this woman was treacherous, and he knew it. There was no emotional connection at all.

He didn't notice when Caroline vanished. He certainly never associated her resignation with the appearance of Emily.


	15. The Lady and the Tramp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from auntypam

"What are you doing here, Quinn?" demanded Christine.

He was lounging outside her house, making the street look untidy.

"Want to go for a drink?"

"I'm not afraid to call the police."

"I am the police love."

"I've no interest in talking to Lester's hirelings." Christine sniffed distainfully and set off up the road.

"I might let something slip, you know, in the heat of passion." He trailed after her.

Christine paused and glared at him. He waggled his eyebrows.

"I'm only agreeing because it will give me an advantage over James Lester."

He laughed. "Message recieved loud and clear."


	16. Baileys and Butterscotch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from darkhorse_99

It's funny the things that stick in the mind.

Nick vividly recalled Claudia giggling over a glass of Baileys. He didn't even remember the occasion, just some pub and Claudia doubled-up and speechless with laughter. His dreams recall a make-shift bonfire night in Stephen's garden, with toffee apples and a fire built from the remains of an uprooted hawthorn tree. Claudia brought home-made butterscotch. She was so beautiful, wrapped up warm with windswept hair, chewing sweets and bobbing for apples while fireworks bloomed overhead.

But that was all he had left, just baileys and butterscotch and the smell of woodsmoke.


	17. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from rain_sleet_snow

Philip Burton hadn't liked Lorraine Wickes. She wasn't even interviewed for Field Coordinator.

Lester made noises about a complaint. Lorraine stopped him. He needed his energy for more important things. Blade lectured her on self-worth, but from the dusty heat of Afghanistan his anger felt abstract and distant.

She handed in her resignation the day Jess Parker walked into the ARC and moved over to UNIT, who had been quietly head-hunting her for some time.

Still, she felt a sense of quiet satisfaction when she heard Lester's tired voice. "I need you back. It's a God awful bloody mess here."


	18. Archeological Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from Keenir

"Are you seriously trying to tell me this was written off as a chance formation?" Becker asked.

Sarah laughed. "It's quite well known in archeological circles. They use it in teaching as a cautionary tale about over-interpreting evidence."

"If it's Connor's and that's a big if, how did he end up in the Cretaceous?"

"It's cause for hope. Never give up, that's the important thing."

The plaster cast somehow ended up in a box in Becker's office. Eventually he hung it on the wall. A perfect impression of a Nike trainer in Connor's shoe size reminding him `never give up'.


	19. Package

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Tarlan's fandom giftbox

Evan received the solicitor's letter early in 2014. It claimed that the law firm of Brown, Lakeland and Pinkerby, acting on very specific instructions, possessed a package that was "at least" 100 years old.

Evan wasn't suprised to find the package, dated 14th July 1896 on the outside, was full of detailed notes in Howard's scrawling hand. It was some comfort to know that Howard had survived long enough to get out of the Cretaceous, but Evan wished he'd come back to the 21st Century. He wished even more that Howard had left a personal message with all the research.


	20. The Early Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for fififolle's fandom stocking, 2016.

It was May Morning. Ryan had acquired the habit, from a brief liaison in his twenties with a somewhat fey ancient historian, of climbing the nearest hill to welcome the sunrise. The reasons were somewhat obscure to Ryan but the habit persisted after the historian left. This year was different. This year, for the first time in God knew how long, he had company.

"Penny for them?" he asked Matt as the sun climbed slowly over the horizon.

"It's beautiful," Matt breathed with wonder in his voice.

The reasons might have been obscure, but the effort was totally worth it.


End file.
